


Bad Day

by americanphancakes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, POV First Person, Stream of Consciousness, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23196004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanphancakes/pseuds/americanphancakes
Summary: Some days are just... bad. And Dan can't help but beat himself up.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 22
Kudos: 53
Collections: phandomficfests: escape from reality





	Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> So I was gonna write a self insert just for the giggles, and... well, I kind of did, in the end, but it turned out to be a serious examination of depression's effect on self-esteem. 
> 
> Probably my most personal fic since "Purple or Yellow," once again using Dan as an avatar for myself.
> 
> Tw: depression depression depression. Primarily the demotivation. Also body image issues and a brief mention of sex.

I mean I don’t even know why I’m bothering writing this. It’s stupid. But my therapist said I should ‘express myself’ or whatever so here it is. Not like I’m feeling much at the moment anyway. So this will probably be boring.

I’m lying on the sofa watching Tokyo Ghoul. Well.  _ ‘Watching.’ _ It’s playing. Dunno what episode it’s at.

I have literally 15,000 e-mails in my inbox. To be fair it’s like ten or fifteen years worth of shit I never got round to sorting. It’s fine though. I can just search and I'll find what I need. But important stuff gets lost sometimes.

Like the e-mail I got two weeks ago from the artist I contacted about doing a t-shirt design. I contacted them, because I loved their work and was excited to collaborate... and yet I still forgot to ever check if they e-mailed back. My head just wasn’t there. I didn’t even realize how long it had been since I contacted them until I saw a new e-mail from them yesterday saying they’d taken on other commissions, and they were sorry but they had to drop out of the project.

Fair enough. I’m fucking shit at this stuff. I love brainstorming with people, coming up with ideas, having creative conversations. But the bureaucratic bullshit? E-mails and phone calls and… fucking… invoices? Fuck all that. I don’t have the talent for it.

Great at making excuses though! Finger guns.

All the fucking cupboards are open again. I can’t close them right now. I can’t be bothered. I'd feel like a right prick yelling at Phil about it though, seeing as how I’m the laziest motherfucker on earth today. Would be hypocritical.

A pair of his socks is literally on the floor next to me. My face is close enough that I can smell them.

I love him but fuck I hate him sometimes.

But whatever. Doesn’t matter.

It’d be shitty to get mad at him over the little stupid shit that annoys me. He’s honestly too good for me. If I fuck this up, I won’t have anyone. So I let it be. Besides, it’s not that big of a deal anyway. Not worth it.

***

Phil’s here now. I’m sat up on one end of the sofa, and he’s on the other end.

For all his faults he really is just so fucking wonderful. We bicker a lot, but honestly I hope he knows how (lol) amazing he is. 

ugh i kinda want to kiss him right now. Kinda wanna do more.

I never know what to do, though. Sometimes I want to… eh… be intimate? What the fuck, why am I censoring myself. No one’s gonna read this anyway. Sometimes I wanna fuck. But like, I don’t know how to tell Phil that. How does a couple initiate sex when they’ve been together this long??? It was so easy when we were still trying to impress each other. When it was more like dating, it didn’t feel weird trying to seduce him or be sexy. Now that we’ve been together for ten fucking years it feels like playacting. It feels ridiculous and silly and stupid and pointless. Probably because I’m not 18 year old Dan anymore. I’m almost thirty, and he’s past thirty, and you know what? We fucking feel it. We can’t go all night like we used to, we’re one and done these days. And… just looks-wise, I don’t feel sexy anymore. Any attempts to appear sexy feel so cringe. Like, my hair is naturally still a disaster, I will never have an ass in any permanent capacity, and my head’s too fucking small for the rest of me. It takes actual work to not get fat. My nose is getting bigger. My eyelids are getting more wrinkled, a harbinger of what’s to come in my 30s, no doubt. I’ve been working on my posture but I still sit on a fucking computer all day so it’s still shit. Of course I’m not sexy. I don’t know why I bother trying to be flirty or seductive.

Even that word “seductive” feels so dumb. “Seductive” isn’t for me. It’s for curvy, wavy-haired lounge singers with dark red lipstick and slit-leg body contour dresses.

I mean, whenever I DO bother trying to seduce Phil, he’s totally up for it… but I’m always scared he won’t be. If he ever said ‘not tonight’ to me again I honestly don’t know if I could deal.

And I know it’s stupid to equate my value with my appearance -- and to be fair, I don’t, appearance is just one factor alongside my laziness and flakiness and 

***

Sorry. I don’t remember how I meant to finish that sentence. It was probably stupid anyway.

Got my prescription refilled. I wasn’t done with last month’s prescription yet though. Guess I missed a few days. Fuck. I can’t even take my medication right.

Phil tells me I’m fantastic. All the time. He tells me I’m wonderful and he loves me and he’s proud of me. I wish I believed it more every time he said it, but it almost sort of dilutes itself and I believe it less. It’s so easy and automatic for him to say it, it’s hard not to feel like it’s just rehearsed and he doesn’t actually feel that way.

I guess I logically know he must love me. He’s stayed with me for ten years. But knowing something and really  _ knowing it _ are two different things. It’s like I can’t internalize it. I can’t make that knowledge a part of me.

Loving him is a part of me though.

I love him so much. Even when I can’t feel anything else, I love him.

I’m scared of that feeling though. I feel like our relationship must be on the edge of a knife all the time, like I’m this fucking close to losing the only thing that makes me happy. He keeps telling me I’m being ridiculous, that I do deserve him, but…

Maybe that’s why I get so mad about him stealing my fucking cereal or leaving his socks on the floor where I can smell them. Maybe if I push him away it won’t be such a shock when he inevitably leaves me.

***

Phil ordered the takeout again. I didn’t even have to ask.

“Bad day?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to cook if you're not feeling up to it.”

“But I promised I would.”

“You can cook another time. We'll see how you feel tomorrow, okay?”

I tried not to cry. “Okay,” I said.

When the food got here, I started to stand up but he insisted on answering the door. I felt so fucking useless. For a minute I almost felt patronised, like Phil felt sorry for me or something. But he just seemed so happy to be taking care of it. By the time he got back to the lounge with the food, I was just fucking bawling.

I ended up pouring my heart out about how guilty I felt. The e-mail, dinner, the fact that I hadn’t moved from the sofa all fucking day. How I felt exhausted despite having done nothing.

He just listened. And he gave me a hug. Told me he loved me. Again. I wished I could believe him. But maybe I’ll believe him tomorrow. Because fuck, I love him.

I'll always probably worry that one day he'll just leave. But right now at least, I do have him. On days like today when I don't even have myself, I still have him.

That's something.

Maybe one day I'll accept that I really am that lucky. That I do deserve him.

Maybe.

Oh. He's just smiled at me.

Hm.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> @americanphancakes on tumblr


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